You may or may not be aware that my husband filed two election complaints against the city concerning the city’s improper use of taxpayer resources to defeat the Historic District Commission (HDC) charter proposal in November 2024. These are my husband’s complaints, not mine, and my opinions are my own. (My husband can form his own opinions, and he’s been speaking through his court filings.) However, I feel compelled to make the distinction between my husband and me for Kristen’s benefit lest she try to find a reason to attach this post to a brief since I know she reads my website posts and she’s recently decided it’s more important to fling poo at the wall and insult my husband in a court filing than argue the merits of the issues all the while she’s billing the crap out of the files – #winning for year-end firm bonuses!
It’s weird that Kristen has suddenly become so interested in these files now, considering that she failed to file a brief for the city before one of the hearings (when it would have taken a short amount of time to simply agree to the arguments or “concur” in the Michigan Secretary of State’s brief since the Secretary is also a party in the case – if in fact she agreed). She also failed to show up for an online hearing relating to the brief she failed to file so she could at least be available in case the judge had questions. Odd behavior for a lawyer, especially since it left the city exposed to a potential ruling that could have resulted in fines against the city. Guess she had more pressing matters that day that prevented her from clicking the “join” button on her laptop or simply asking an associate attorney to sit in. Fortunately for Kristen, there wasn’t a finding against the city after that hearing. (Did the city council approve that nonparticipation knowing the risks? If not, there’s a word for leaving your client exposed like that – I’m sure it will come to me if I think on it long enough. 🤔)
According to Kristen, pursuing properly-filed election complaints involving Clarkston city officials improperly using taxpayer resources to defeat a citizen-initiated ballot proposal they don’t like isn’t really about that – it’s really just about my husband Richard’s “acrimony,” “animosity,” and desire to punish the city. 🙄 She tells the court he “has an axe to grind, and not just as a result of the failed proposed City charter amendment …. Bisio’s animosity against the City is deep-seated and apparently unyielding.” She says he is on “a quest to punish the City” and is seeking “the maximum possible punishment.” He supposedly has “no problem driving up the City’s legal expenditures.”
And that’s only a sampling of her invective. Given all that, the implicit argument is that the court should reject my husband’s claims simply because he is a bad person intent on ruining the city. In other words, hey judge, just focus on my irrelevant – and untrue – personal opinion about someone I don’t know. It’s the legal equivalent of “look, squirrel!” If this kind of crap sounds familiar, it’s because it is. The city’s attorneys used the same tactics in my five-year FOIA lawsuit as the case wound its way to the city’s eventual loss in the Michigan Supreme Court, and they apparently reviewed everything I wrote in a pathetic attempt to find dirt on me, even mentioning my website in a court filing – in a case that was only about the FOIA! (Yawn.)
The truth is that like every other judicial engagement my husband or I have had with the city, it’s only about the city not doing what it’s supposed to do, whether it’s hiding records that shouldn’t be hidden, holding unlawfully secret meetings that it shouldn’t, or here, where they were wrongfully using taxpayer resources to fight taxpayers. If this issue isn’t resolved, the Clarkston charter provision allowing citizens to change our charter by ballot proposal is meaningless. After all, if the city government wanted to change the charter, it would just follow the process to do it using taxpayer dollars. It’s axiomatic that if citizens want to change the charter, it’s because they want to force city government to do or not do something the city doesn’t agree with. Citizens must pay out of their own pockets to get a proposal on the ballot and for the campaign afterwards. City employees and officials can personally vote as they choose if they live here – but they don’t get to use city resources to tell anyone else how to vote. It’s outrageously improper for the city government to mount its own opposition campaign to a citizen initiative – and that’s why these issues come up under the campaign finance act. And this is a perfect case for eventual Michigan Supreme Court review if the city wants to continue fighting for years without engaging in discussions to reasonably resolve it.
I wonder if Kristen also has a personal opinion on the $96,000 that’s still sitting in the city’s treasury that the city would not have except for Richard’s recent efforts in discovering 14 years of negligent city overpayments to Independence Township for police and fire services – does that square with her animus claim? How about all the free work he did codifying the city’s ordinances while he served on the city council, even though I suspect his hourly attorney billing rate dwarfs Kristen’s yet is commensurate with his experience? Maybe Kristen thinks the actual abuse people suffered at the hands of unqualified HDC commissioners over the years was fictional? Perhaps she’s not aware that the worst abuse occurred during a time when the HDC was led by a pervert who liked to patrol the neighborhood with a clipboard seeking out purported violations and who has been charged with crimes relating to cutting and pasting photos of children he personally knew onto porn images and adding his own disgusting captions – and that he brought those porn photos to HDC meetings?
Has Kristen ever read the charter proposal? I doubt it. If she had, she’d realize that one of the more significant aspects of the proposal required city council involvement before the untrained HDC volunteers could fine residents up to $5,000 or drag them into court and subject taxpayers to boat loads of legal fees. So, is Kristen saying Richard hates Clarkston government because he wanted more oversight from Clarkston government over the all-volunteer HDC process? 🤔 You know, maybe Kristen should take a seat and actually read the proposal before she engages in any more late-night fantasies about the motivations of a legal opponent.
Maybe it’s because Kristen simply has an issue with grassroots efforts to follow a perfectly lawful process to get a proposal on the ballot with the hope of having a fair vote on the matter without the city using taxpayer resources to put a thumb on the scale? Without Richard, the opportunity to change the way that residents were treated – that locals have been complaining about for years – would not have been possible. Even though the proposal didn’t pass – and it would have been surprising if it did in light of the fantastical lies the small group of people funding the slick opposition campaign told about it coupled with Clarkston government’s inappropriate use of taxpayer resources to defeat it – it still gave voice to an important issue in the city. Despite all that, 225 people voted for the proposal, but I guess they too have been relegated to the trash by Kristen (even though they are also paying for her legal services to the city). Neither of us regret spending our own time and resources on the proposal, we’re grateful for the support we received, and we would lend our own support to anyone else who wants to step forward and try again.
As additional evidence of Richard’s supposed animus toward the city, Kristen also mentions the lawsuit Richard had to file to compel the Clarkston clerk to do her job and canvass the signatures to get the HDC charter proposal on the ballot. That lawsuit was a protective filing because the timelines are so short and if you snooze, you lose and have to wait for the next election. Why was that lawsuit necessary? I learned the real backstory when I had a chance to talk with the clerk following her abrupt resignation. She told me that her darling fellow employees at city hall told her we were bad people. So, when she finally answered Richard (after he sent two emails and a letter asking about the status), she said only that her review was “in process” – even though she’d already finished all the work more than a week before. Why not tell the truth and avoid the lawsuit? Because she said she’d read the statute and there was no legal requirement that she provide a status (and courtesy is unnecessary when your colleagues tell you someone is a bad person). She not only concealed the status of her canvass but also refused to state in writing that she would timely certify the ballot question to the county clerk for placement on the November 2024 ballot. I have always suspected (but can’t prove) that city manager Jonathan Smith and deputy clerk/assistant treasurer/administrative assistant Evelyn Bihl were aware of and possibly encouraged the clerk’s nonresponse. Why? Because Smith wouldn’t answer the mayor’s direct question asking why the clerk didn’t just tell Richard directly that the signature review was complete, and Bihl said she thought Richard was “unkind” for not calling the clerk before filing a lawsuit – after sending two emails and a letter and receiving a cutesy nonresponse that falsely stated the work was in process when it had been completed. And overshadowing this was the city’s decision to keep a marijuana-related initiative off the ballot two years before, a decision that both the Oakland County Circuit Court and the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled was illegal – how was Richard to know the city wasn’t trying the same tactic again with another ballot proposal the city didn’t like?
Perhaps Kristen can enlighten us on her thinking about why she thinks this particular approach to defending cases in Clarkston – insulting opponents – is appropriate. She does have a history of spending a fortune in public resources to steer a litigation titanic straight into the bottom of the ocean by defending an unconstitutional tree ordinance and the shocking way it was applied to commercial property owners when she headed Canton Township’s legal department. You can read about it here and here and here and here and here and here and here.
If you don’t feel like reading the articles, the bottom line is Kristen got her ass handed to her in both state and federal court for trying to destroy local landowners who cut down their own trees on their own property without playing “Mother May I” with the Canton Township government; demanded that they pay a fine of almost a half million dollars, an amount that was entirely disconnected from any damage to the township from the owners’ failure to get a permit; and insisted that they replace the trees the owners didn’t want with trees of the type and size of the township’s choosing (rather than the Christmas tree farm the owners wanted). This article states the legal bills to defend the tree ordinance totaled approximately $155,000 and the township apparently also spent an additional $180,000 to defend against the property owners’ claims the township violated their constitutional rights. The article also states the township’s insurance policy didn’t kick in until the costs exceeded $250,000 per claim so the taxpayers ate all of Kristen’s litigation costs arising out of her little crusade – and that wasn’t the end of the legal fees since the article notes the state court case was ongoing. The article was written on February 11, 2022, while Kristen was in charge of Canton Township’s legal department and controlling the direction of a lawsuit that was intended to crush property owners and in defense of an unconstitutional ordinance that she may have drafted during the ten years she spent working for Canton Township as in-house counsel. Do you think her attitude about controlling legal costs has changed in four years? And yet she claims Richard “has no problem driving up the City’s legal expenditures”? Pot, meet kettle.
Maybe Kristen simply doesn’t like it when citizens challenge their own government and believes it’s OK to file briefs filled with insults against someone who is literally paying part of her legal services bills? I don’t know. Guess you’d have to ask her why she thinks her recent court filing was appropriate conduct. Maybe she can also explain how it squares with the Rule 6.5(a) of the Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct (“A lawyer shall treat with courtesy and respect all persons involved in the legal process….”)
I can’t help but remember wiser and more senior lawyers teaching me that, while it’s ever so tempting to insult an opponent in a court file, resisting those baser instincts is always best. Playground-like name-calling might feel good, but it doesn’t help the interest of the most important person in the equation – your client – who deserves to have the lawyer engage with the court using the law and the facts. Not only does it throw a wrench into any possibility of amicably resolving the dispute, but it also frequently backfires by irritating already busy judges because it forces them to read through irrelevant drama and childish crap to get to the crux of the matter.
But I’m not writing for the court today. I’m criticizing someone who is getting paid with my tax dollars and I’m using my first amendment rights to invite my fellow citizens into the back room so they too can know how their tax dollars were spent during the run up to the November 2024 election, what the “assistant” city lawyer they are paying is doing, and so they understand that this lawyer has the backing of your city council to spend your money doing this. The council approves Kristen’s monthly bills without discussion or question. I object to what the city did in November 2024 and think it was unlawful. I have no issue with Kristen providing a reasoned defense to the cases, but I do object to not filing briefs, not showing up for hearings, and not focusing on the issues in the case. Be better.
You may have seen a lot of billing for these two cases, attached like clockwork every month to a city council meeting packet and routinely approved for payment. I’ll briefly tell you what they’re about, but I’d also note that Kristen has decided it’s better to bill the crap out of the file than approach my husband to seek a resolution that both the city and my husband would be happy with. Weird that she hasn’t done that, huh? It’s true that settlement discussions aren’t always fruitful, but as I said, if you want to serve your client’s interests over your own ego (and year-end bonus opportunity), you probably should stick to arguing the law and the facts without insulting the very opponent you would need to approach to end things amicably. Gerry Fisher, the Clarkston city attorney (i.e., not the assistant and not an asshole) has a long track record and a lot of goodwill in the local area, including people who have been on the other side of the aisle from him in court. It’s unfortunate Kristen hasn’t learned anything from him during the time they worked together both now and in the past, and it’s also unfortunate that he’s been hands-off on the election complaint matters.
I’ve attached the CVs they both sent to Clarkston when they were hired here – feel free to compare and contrast Mr. Fisher’s voluminous experience with Kristen’s. You should know that the goal of the alliance between Mr. Fisher and Kristen is designed so Kristen can slide right in as the (not assistant) city attorney after a period of time. In her submission, Kristen stated her billing rate is more than the $150/hour she’s charging but she’s willing to charge less “with a view of earning the city’s confidence.” The obvious goal is for the more experienced Mr. Fisher to eventually step back and for Kristen to assume all the work – at a higher rate after she thinks she’s “earned the city’s confidence.” (Has she earned your confidence so far?)
So, let’s talk about the cases Kristen is defending by insult. After all, Kristen is billing you for writing long memos to the city council discussing the cases and what she’s doing with them (that you’ll never see because memos of this type are protected by the attorney/client privilege) and for wasting billing hours trying to find a way to insert as many personal insults against her opponent as possible in her briefing. I think it’s only fair that you get your own memo at no additional charge from someone who knows what actually happened in 2024 and what’s happening now. Here goes.
These cases involve two separate election complaints with two different sets of bad government actors. At the beginning and before these complaints were ever the subject of court proceedings, a Michigan state employee who apparently didn’t read past the word “Clarkston,” decided the two complaints were really the same and supposedly dismissed one complaint asserting that answering the first complaint would resolve the second. But the second complaint was dismissed (says the Secretary of State) but wasn’t (says the circuit court), appealed two or three times, was decided by the Secretary twice, and is now pending in two different courts. The state employee’s simple act of stupidity resulted in a whole lot of lawyer time to try to straighten out because no one can eff things up faster than a government employee. But as you will see, the complaints really are separate. I’ll call the one the “HDC complaint” and the other the “city council complaint.”
The HDC Complaint:
Michigan’s campaign finance act prohibits using government resources to oppose or support a ballot proposal.
This complaint originates in the conduct of local resident Nancy Moon. Nancy was appointed to an oh-so-very-important 🙄 volunteer role as the chair of the historic district study committee. If you’re upset that our quaint little historic district was bastardized to now include 1960s homes within the definition of “historic,” blame Nancy. If you don’t like the fact that people skulked around your house, took photos, and then posted those photos and personal details about you and/or your home online at the Clarkston Independence District Library, take it up with Nancy.
Nancy is married to Michael M. Moon, a guy who really likes it if you call him “doctor.” (He’s even listed that way on the HDC page of the city’s website.) I found only one Michael M. Moon when searching for a medical license, and that person’s license lapsed in 2020. Md.com has a post for a Rochester pathologist named Michael M. Moon who graduated from medical school in 1989. Is this him? I don’t know. The Clarkston Michael M. Moon has been on the HDC for a long time now, lending his background about – (looking down, checking notes) – historical preservation issues to the work of the HDC. I guess his background (or lack thereof) doesn’t matter because believe it or not, you don’t need any actual, relevant experience to serve on the Clarkston HDC (and our current HDC chair had exactly zero relevant experience when she was appointed). The defeated HDC charter proposal had language that would have beefed things up a bit so that members needed something more than “golly gosh gee whiz, appoint me to the HDC because I really like old homes,” or “I’m totes qualified for an HDC appointment because I recently did some work on my home in the historic district,” so now give me the power to fine the snot out of my neighbors and use tax dollars to sue them into oblivion.
Michael M. Moon is also the HDC’s recording secretary and that’s important to the election complaint.
Nancy Moon really didn’t like the HDC charter proposal. She personally donated $300 to the mama-slap-yo-face-lies-from-the-pit-of-hell inaptly named “Committee to Keep Clarkston Charming” campaign created to oppose the ballot proposal. Remember them? I liked to refer to them as the “Charmers.” They were the ones who ran an extremely slick advertising campaign coordinated by Melissa (HDC member) and Joe (former council member and former mayor) Luginski, neither of whom were registered to vote in Clarkston at the time or cared enough to commit to staying here long term, since they ran the campaign against the charter proposal while living in a rented house on Main Street as they waited for renovations on their Independence Township residence to be completed that they have now thankfully moved into (our gain is Independence Township’s loss 🥂).
Here were some of the straight-up lies pushed by the Charmers and funded in part by Nancy Moon. They claimed the proposal would, among other things: harm the city’s place on the national register of historic places; cause a 4-lane Main Street; decrease home values; gut the historic district ordinance and the current system; remove “real authority” over historic district decisions from the HDC and make them merely an advisory board; provide no savings for taxpayers; provide few requirements for new buildings; destroy the historic district; cause the city to lose grant opportunities; place unrealistic requirements on HDC commissioners; severely limit the purportedly “acceptable meaning of open spaces”; allow for an “anything goes” vibe; change the appeals process for residents; cause individuals to lose tax credits; hurt Clarkston’s character; allow developers to tear down historic buildings; and allow generic commercial buildings to be built downtown.
Please understand that I don’t quarrel with the Luginskis’ or Nancy Moon’s personal views or anyone who makes political contributions or works on a campaign. To each his own. However, I do think it’s important to remember that Nancy made a significant financial contribution toward a campaign that was deliberately designed to mislead Clarkston residents and that speaks volumes toward the conduct that prompted the election complaint.
What did Nancy Moon do? She used her appointed government position as chair of the historic district study committee to attempt to influence how people would vote on a ballot proposal. How did she do it? She tried to solicit support from the Michigan’s State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), a government agency that she would have had no “in” with except for her Clarkston government position. She abused that government position to push falsehoods about the charter proposal during a Clarkston government meeting, and her husband inserted the false claims into published HDC meeting minutes that are still on the Clarkston government’s website, all in an obvious attempt to influence voting on the ballot proposal.
Demonstrating that she’s not really the brightest bulb in the box, Nancy’s email reaching out to her SHPO friends was crystal clear. She made absolutely no attempt to hide what she was doing, and the subject she chose for her email exchanges with SHPO was “Promotional Material to Stop the Petition.” (Dude, really?) Not only that, but in one of her emails she candidly said: “Can we use this information in a campaign to try and get residents of the village to vote NO on the ballot to change the HDC?” Nancy’s obvious goal was to try to secure a statement that supported two of the campaign’s many falsehoods – that the HDC charter proposal would change the appeals process for residents and that it would have an impact on resident tax credits. Both claims were untrue and one of her SHPO friends explained the proposal would have no effect on availability of historic preservation tax credits and another told her that the statement she had inserted in the HDC minutes “is not entirely true.”
HDC meetings generally consist of discussions regarding whether changes to homes in the historic district should be approved or not. That’s the whole point of the HDC. I’m not aware that these meetings were ever used for political purposes before this time, nor should they ever be. But that didn’t stop Nancy! After a presentation about the status of the historic district study committee work and a discussion about pending legislative action in Lansing to increase the amount of historic preservation tax credits available, the minutes show that Nancy included the following unnecessary and unrelated statement: “In asking details about this house bill with the State Historic Preservation Office I received the following quote: ‘Changing the appeals process in Clarkston’s historic district ordinance would not be with [sic] consequence. Preservation programs such as Michigan’s State preservation tax credit and the Certified Local Government program require that a community have a historic ordinance in place that complies with Public Act 169 of 1970, as amended. If Clarkston’s historic district ordinance no longer complies with state law (PA 169), locally designated properties would no longer be eligible for these programs.’”
Wanna know who inserted this unnecessary bullshit into formal HDC minutes? That would be Nancy’s husband, Michael Moon, because he was the HDC’s recording secretary.
I’m pretty sure Nancy meant to say changing the appeals process would not be WITHOUT consequence because otherwise, who cares? Indeed, the corrected statement with the word “without” was adopted by the Charmers’ website built by resident Cara Catallo. And that was the point of making the statement – it furthered the Charmers’ goal to push as much false information out to the public in as many ways as possible. But trash-posting lies on a political website wasn’t the problem – Nancy Moon’s abuse of her government position to influence the outcome of a ballot proposal was.
Why was the minutes statement a problem? Because Nancy Moon was at the meeting to discuss her study committee’s efforts and a house bill for tax credits, not the charter proposal; the charter proposal had nothing to do with appeals (the word “appeal” wasn’t used anywhere in the proposal) or tax credits; and her SHPO friends had advised her that the charter proposal wouldn’t affect anyone’s tax credits. There was no reason for anyone to put this statement in the minutes – unless they were deliberately trying to use government resources to influence a ballot proposal, something the government isn’t allowed to do. Nancy gave away the game when her public statements arose out of her emails with the subject line that she chose herself – “Promotional Material to Stop the Petition,” and expressly asking the SHPO employees to assist the campaign to oppose the ballot proposal – that she also contributed $300 to support.
Your city government thinks this is OK. Kristen and the Secretary of State have been, so far successfully, urging the courts to ignore Nancy’s smoking gun email and the insertion of statements that didn’t have anything to do with the status of tax credit legislation or the study committee’s work and focus on the specific words of the statements themselves only – that it would be a bad thing if the appeals process in the historic district ordinance were changed and tax credits could potentially be affected if an ordinance didn’t comply with state law. Kristen and the Secretary of State want the court to ignore irrefutable evidence that provides the context for why Nancy Moon did what she did; ignore that her statements were entirely unnecessary to the discussion at the HDC meeting (but very relevant to Nancy Moon’s support of the group that was working against the charter proposal that she’d financially contributed to); ignore Nancy’s inappropriate use of her appointed position to unsuccessfully try to get approval from her buddies at SHPO to make statements that supported her goal of “Promotional Material to Stop the Petition”; and ignore the fact that the statement as it related to the charter proposal was demonstrably false. But the city now says in its brief, “whether or not the statement … was true or not is irrelevant to the question of whether there was a violation of the [Michigan Campaign Finance Act].” (Seriously?)
You should know that even though the city and Secretary of State have prevailed – so far – that along the way, the court has rejected the standard the Secretary of State had been using to review government speech under the campaign finance act across the state for 20 years. Until now, the Secretary had been allowing government officials to get away with statements that only candidates could make. As we all know, candidates can get away with a lot during a campaign, but government officials should obviously be held to a higher standard. This is definitely a win for the public!
If inappropriate conduct like Nancy Moon’s is allowed to stand, Clarkston government can use any vehicle to convince you to vote for or against a ballot proposal (as long as it doesn’t expressly say vote “no” or “yes”) and that means you can expect a ton of propaganda when the city tries to get you to vote yes on an expected tax increase proposal this year. So, not only are Clarkston and your city officials fighting for the right to lie to you, but they will also probably be asking you to pay them more so they can continue do it. But don’t hold your breath that the court will take the side of the angels and rule against Clarkston – the Michigan Attorney General recently refused to prosecute the Michigan Secretary of State for her own campaign finance violations. Although the Attorney General found there was a violation, she decided there was no way to prosecute her friend, the Secretary of State. This is the same Secretary who ruled, two times, that Clarkston did nothing wrong. It’s apparently OK to use taxpayer funded government resources in service of a candidate or a proposal you like. I guess they only prosecute if taxpayer resources are used for things they don’t like?
The city council complaint:
As I stated earlier, Michigan campaign finance law prohibits using government resources to oppose or support a ballot proposal. That’s what your city government did here as well.
I’m pretty sure that most people on the city council and at city hall didn’t want the HDC charter proposal to pass. An example of this was city manager Jonathan Smith’s use of his government-funded “weekly communication email” to encourage people to attend a presentation at the Clarkston Independence District Library, falsely suggesting that our HDC proposal to modify an existing ordinance was a proposal to affect the historic district itself. After pointing out what Smith had done, former city attorney Tom Ryan forced Smith to issue a correction. (Smith’s wife used social media to trash the proposal, but she’s a private citizen and entitled to her viewpoint.)
Want to guess who was seen around town passing out flyers for the library presentation that Smith wanted everyone to know about? If you guessed Nancy Moon, you would be right! In the end, I’m sure the Charmers were not happy because most of the seats at the library presentation were filled by fellow Charmers and Clarkston city officials – and to their disappointment, the library director announced at the beginning of the presentation there would be no discussion about the charter proposal. The director obviously knew she couldn’t use her own government platform and resources to sponsor a hate session about the charter proposal without violating campaign finance law. Good for her!
And then someone at the city had a totally non-brilliant idea to hold a special city council meeting specifically to talk about the charter proposal. Cara Catallo originally suggested this on 8/26/24. She said a meeting was necessary where we talk about the “real truths,” apparently as those truths were defined by Cara Catallo. (You’ll recall Catallo set up the Charmers website that was used to help push falsehoods out to the public about the charter proposal.) But darn it, the haters on the council and within city government knew they couldn’t use their government positions to trash-talk the proposal. After all, then city attorney Ryan had specifically advised them at a previous city council meeting they weren’t allowed to use government resources to take a position for or against a ballot proposal. (Fun fact – Nancy and Michael Moon both attended that meeting and heard Ryan’s admonition, so there is no argument they weren’t aware of the law as they were taking steps to use government resources to oppose the ballot proposal as described in the HDC election complaint discussion above.)
Catallo’s idea was put into action with council member Ted Quisenberry’s motion at the very next city council meeting on 9/9/24 when he asked the council to approve a future “special meeting” so people could “voice any questions or concerns they have” about the charter proposal. (FYI, Quisenberry donated $200 to the Charmers campaign.) A “special” council meeting is one held at a different time than the regularly-scheduled meetings. The Clarkston government brain trust ultimately decided they could have the meeting, but they would claim it was only about educating the public. But how could they “educate” the public without also steering the public about the charter proposal in one direction or the other? Then city attorney Ryan suggested this could be accomplished simply by council members taking turns giving a dramatic reading of all four pages of the charter proposal without further comment – apparently because Clarkston residents are really dumb and can’t read! (One of the letters to the editor written by someone who’d provided financial support to the campaign actually said people should vote no because there were too many words, which was the same concept – we’re smart, you’re stupid, vote no.)
But the moronic reading of the charter proposal wasn’t really the point of the special meeting. Just as Catallo and Quisenberry intended, when the city council meeting was opened up for public comments, the Charmers used the opportunity to make false statements about the charter proposal and to have those falsehoods repeatedly pushed to the public by Independence Television’s live and repeat broadcasts. Janet Kreger (formerly of the Michigan Historic Preservation Network) even appeared to make a public comment at this small-town council meeting, presumably invited by the Charmers because hello! how else would she have found out about it? So, not only were the HDC charter proposal’s opponents able to use a government function (a council meeting), and a government facility (city hall), they were also able to use a taxpayer-funded broadcasting system (Independence Television) to broadcast lies intended to attempt to persuade Clarkston voters to oppose the charter proposal in the days leading up to the election – and anyone with a brain knew that this was the whole point of the special city council meeting.
Just so you know, Richard had multiple discussions with then city attorney Ryan before the special council meeting happened, specifically warning him that this was going to result in a campaign finance violation for the city. Ryan dismissed all his concerns, insisting this was totally only about educating the public. (Totally 🙄.) Another fine recommendation from our former city attorney whose advice, in addition to this election complaint, also caused two FOIA lawsuits, an Open Meetings Act lawsuit, and earned the city council a warning from the Oakland County Prosecutor about the criminal ramifications of their conduct – and these are just the things I have personal knowledge about. Booyah!
So, there you have it. That’s what’s behind the election complaints and the legal services bills. Essentially, Kristen and your Clarkston government are using your tax dollars and resources to defend using your tax dollars and resources to influence you to vote on ballot proposals the way they wanted you to vote, and they are expressly arguing that it’s OK to lie to the public. Anyone with eyes and ears knows that city officials did exactly what Richard says they did, and we believe those things are prohibited under campaign finance law.
I honestly don’t know how this will turn out in the end, but there’s a lot of legal road yet to go so this could go on for a while, even potentially to the Michigan Supreme Court. I think it’s important for everyone to know what the city is doing, that Kristen has never approached my husband to resolve the cases, and if she would spend a fortune in taxpayer dollars over an unconstitutional tree-cutting ordinance in an attempt to force property owners to bend to her will, I doubt she would even suggest that city council should try to resolve the election complaints. (I do have additional comments on Kristen’s billing, but since this is running long, I’ll defer them to a future post.)